BARTON APPEARS
The details of the wedding Mrs. Halliday decided to take over into her
own hands.
"You two can just leave that to me," she informed them.
"But look here," protested Don, "I don't see why we need bother with a
lot of fuss and--"
"What business is this of yours?" Mrs. Halliday challenged him.
"Only we haven't much time," he warned.
"There's going to be time enough for Sally to be married properly,"
she decided.
That was all there was to it. It seems that tucked away up in the
attic there was an old trunk and tucked away in that a wedding dress
of white silk which had been worn by Sally's mother.
"It's been kept ag'in' this very day," explained Mrs. Halliday,
"though I will say that I was beginnin' to git discouraged."
The dress was brought out, and no more auspicious omen could have been
furnished Mrs. Halliday than the fact that, except in several
unimportant details, Sally could have put it on and worn it, just as
it was. Not only did it fit, but the intervening years had brought
back into style again the very mode in which it had been designed, so
that, had she gone to a Fifth Avenue dressmaker, she could have found
nothing more in fashion. Thus it was possible to set the wedding date
just four days off, for Saturday. That was not one moment more of time
than Mrs. Halliday needed in which to put the house in order--even
with the hearty cooperation of Don, who insisted upon doing his part,
which included the washing of all the upper windows.
Those were wonderful days for him. For one thing he discovered that
not only had there been given into his keeping the clear-seeing,
steady-nerved, level-headed woman who had filled so large a share of
his life this last year, but also another, who at first startled him
like some wood nymph leaping into his path. She was so young, so
vibrant with life, so quick with her smiles and laughter--this other.
It was the girl in her, long suppressed, because in the life she had
been leading in town there had been no playground. Her whole attention
there had been given to the subjection of the wild impulses in which
she now indulged. She laughed, she ran, she reveled in being just her
care-free, girlish self. Don watched her with a new thrill. He felt as
though she were taking him back to her early youth--as though she were
filling up for him all those years of her he had missed.
At night, about the usual time he was dining in town, Mrs. Halliday
insisted that Sally should go to bed, as she herself did, which, of
course, left Don no alternative but to go himself. There was no
possible object in his remaining up after Sally was out of sight. But
the early morning belonged to her and to him. At dawn he rose and when
he came downstairs, he found her waiting for him. Though Mrs. Halliday
protested that Sally was losing her beauty sleep she was not able to
produce any evidence to prove it. If any one could look any fresher or
more wonderful than Sally, as she stepped out of the house by his
side into the light of the newborn day, then there was no sense in it,
because, as she was then, she filled his eyes and his heart to
overflowing. She wore no hat, but except for this detail he was never
conscious of how she was dressed. There was always too much to occupy
him in her brown eyes, in her mouth, which, while losing nothing of
its firmness, had acquired a new gentleness. He had always thought of
her lips as cold, but he knew them better now. At the bend in the road
where he had kissed her first, he kissed her again every morning. She
always protested. That was instinctive. But in the end she submitted,
because it always seemed so many hours since she had seen him last,
and because she made him understand that not until the next day could
he expect this privilege.
"What's the use of being engaged if I can't kiss you as often as I
wish?" he demanded once.
"We're engaged in order to be married," she explained.
"And after we are married--"
"You wait and see," she answered, her cheeks as red as any schoolgirl's.
"But that's three days off," he complained.
Even to her, happy as she was, confident as she was, the interval
to Saturday sometimes seemed like a very long space of time. For
one thing, she felt herself at night in the grip of a kind of
foreboding absolutely foreign to her. Perhaps it was a natural
reaction from the high tension of the day, but at night she sometimes
found herself starting to her elbow in an agony of fear. Before the
day came, something would happen to Don, because such happiness as
this was not meant for her. She fell a victim to all manner of
wild fears and extravagant fancies. On the second night there was a
heavy thunderstorm. She did not mind such things ordinarily. The
majesty of the darting light and the rolling crash of the thunder
always thrilled her. But this evening the sky was blotted out
utterly and quick light shot from every point of the compass at
once. As peal followed peal, the house shook. Even then it was not of
herself she thought. She had no fear except for Don. This might be
the explanation of her foreboding. It happened, too, that his room
was beneath the big chimney where if the house were hit the bolt
would be most apt to strike. Dressing hastily in her wrapper and
bedroom slippers, she stole into the hall. A particularly vicious
flash illuminated the house for a second and then plunged it into
darkness. She crept to Don's very door. There she crouched,
resolved that the same bolt should kill them both. There she remained,
scarcely daring to breathe until the shower passed.
It was a silly thing to do. When she came back to her own room, her
cheeks were burning with shame. The next morning she was miserable in
fear lest he discover her weakness. He did not, though he marveled at
a new tenderness in her that had been born in the night.
The fourth day broke fair and Don found himself busy until noon
helping with the decorations of green and of wild flowers; for though
only a dozen or so neighbors had been asked, Mrs. Halliday was
thorough in whatever she undertook. Had she been expecting a hundred
she could have done no more in the way of preparation except perhaps
to increase the quantity of cake and ices.
Don himself had asked no one except old Barton, of Barton &
Saltonstall, and him he did not expect, although he had received no
reply to his invitation. What, then, was his surprise when toward the
middle of the forenoon, as he was going into the house with an armful
of pine boughs, he heard a voice behind him,--
"How do, Don?"
Turning, he saw Barton in a frock coat and a tall hat that he might
have worn last at Pendleton, Senior's, wedding.
"For Heaven's sake!" exclaimed Don, dropping his pine boughs on the
doorstep and rushing to meet him. "I call this mighty good of you."
"I could hardly do less for Pendleton's boy," answered Barton.
"Well, sir, you're mighty welcome. Come right in. Oh, Sally," he
called.
Sally came on the run, not knowing what had happened. She wore a
calico apron and had not found time to do her hair since morning. It
was not exactly the costume she would have chosen in which first to
meet Mr. Barton. Her cheeks showed it.
"Sally," said Don, "this is Mr. Barton--my father's lawyer. Mr.
Barton, this is Miss Winthrop."
Barton bowed low with old-fashioned courtesy. Then he allowed his keen
gray eyes to rest a moment upon hers.
"I am very glad to meet you," he said.
"Will you come in?" she asked. "I'm afraid the house is very much in
disorder just now, but I want you to meet my aunt."
Mrs. Halliday was scarcely more presentable than Miss Winthrop, but
the latter found a certain relief in that fact.
"I'm glad to know you," Mrs. Halliday greeted him cordially.
But what to do with him at just this time was a problem which would
have baffled her had he not solved it for himself.
"Please don't let me interrupt the preparations," he begged. "I should
not have ventured here--at just this time--except that I wanted to see
Don about a few legal matters."
"Mr. Barton," explained Don to Sally, "is the man who had the pleasant
duty thrust upon him of telling me that I was cut off without a
cent."
"It was an unpleasant duty," nodded Barton, "but I hope it may be my
good fortune to make up for that."
"I'm afraid the only place you can sit is on the front doorstep,"
laughed Sally.
"As good a place as any," answered Don, leading the way.
"Well," asked Don good-naturedly as soon as they were seated there,
"what's the trouble now? I tell you right off it's got to be something
mighty serious to jar me any at just this time."
"There was still another codicil to your father's will," explained
Barton at once--"a codicil I have not been at liberty to read to you
until now. It had, in fact, no point except in the contingency of your
marriage."
"I hope you aren't going to take the house away from me," scowled
Don.
"No," answered Barton slowly. "It has to do rather with an additional
provision. The substance of it is that in case you married any
one--er--meeting with my approval, you were to be given an allowance
of two thousand a year."
"Eh?"
"Two thousand a year. After that, one thousand a year additional for
each child born of that marriage until the total allowance amounts to
five thousand dollars. At that point the principal itself is to be
turned over to you."
"Oh, Sally!" called Don.
She came running again. It was still four hours before they would be
safely married and many things might happen in four hours.
"Sit down here and listen to this," he commanded. "Now, do you mind
saying that all over again?"
Barton repeated his statement.
"What do you think of that?" inquired Don. "It's just as though I had
my salary raised two thousand a year. Not only that--but the rest is
up to you."
"Don!"
"Well, it is."
"And besides," she gasped, "Mr. Barton has not yet said he approves."
Mr. Barton arose.
"May I say that at once?" he smiled. "I do not think I have always
given Don as much credit for his good judgment as I feel he should
have been given."
"Good old Barton!" choked Don.
"There's one thing more," said Barton--"a--a little present for
myself."
He handed Don an envelope.
"Thank you, sir," said Don, thrusting it unopened in his pocket. "And
now it seems to me the least the bride can do is to let you kiss
her."
"I'm not a bride yet," answered Sally demurely, "but--"
She came to Barton's side and he kissed her on the cheek.
"It's too bad that Pendleton couldn't have lived to know his son's
wife," he said.
A little later Don gave Sally the envelope to open. It contained a
check for five hundred dollars.
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Don, "we're rolling in wealth. I guess when
we get back to town we'll have to buy a car."
"When we get back to town we'll open a bank account," corrected
Sally.